Annabel, my Annabel!

I found her!

In the Pink: Part 1

It all started harmlessly enough, as life-changing experiences often do. Ambushed, wooed, flattered and ultimately seduced with promises of great wealth and opportunity, creative autonomy, a supportive team and life-long friendship, associations and success. Who could resist? And who would ever have guessed that a little over eighteen months later, I would be standing, homeless and stranded on the wrong side of Sydney Harbour with my life in tatters?

Bear with me. Withhold your judgment. Resist the temptation to know where this was all going to end ... if only because we do.

***

Making things happen

My single greatest blessing and my single greatest curse is simple: I make things happen. From the days of my childhood when I used to mount entire puppet productions of the great musicals in the loungeroom of our family home, I have always made things. Happen. People who, in my presence, have dared wonder how an idea or a vision might be brought to life have usually either ended up running from it as it materialises right before their eyes, or (on the rarest of occasions) embracing it.

Burnt almost beyond recognition by the penury associated with being an independent theatre maker, and desperately needing a handsome and reliable income to pay off the accrued debts of my creative fancies, I established a small communications company ... a desktop publishing company, actually. It was actually always just clever me with an Apple Macintosh and a couple of clients who needed my skills. Nothing grand ... business cards, letterheads ... the occasional brochure here ... flyers, posters ... you know. Junk mail. Clever, neat, pretty and fancy, maybe, but junk mail nonetheless.

Over the years—ten of them in fact—I actually became quite good at junk mail. My designer's eye developed and my instinct for balance and a visual imperative translated almost effortlessly into graphic and typographic design. Slowly, my little business grew and a steady (if not always reliable) income ensued. Sure, it had its ups and downs ... but mostly, I could pay my bills and live the kind of life where I could do pretty much what I pleased. When I pleased. And it pleased me, often.

My move to Sydney in 1999 was an impulsive, spontaneous and entirely irresponsible leap of faith. I had grown tired and bored in Melbourne and the pre-2000 Sydney Olympic Games was abuzz with all sorts of mysterious possibilities (none of which, I should add at this point, ever materialised ... for anybody). Perched in Utopia on the rooftop of a daggy old apartment block in Potts Point, I fell in love with Sydney and her dazzling physical environment. The sky. The lights. The water. The constant activity. The new sights, sounds and smells. The impulsive recklessness and the determination. And the greed. My little business bubbled along ... and courtesy of Marcus O'Donnell, who I had known from the tiny and insular world of gay publishing in Melbourne, I started a regular job as Production Coordinator at Sydney's leading weekly gay and lesbian newspaper – The Sydney Star Observer.

This contract was the beginning of many, many wonderful Sydney stories. Guy, who was the designer and person who put The Sydney Star Observer together, would become a great, inspirational friend ... and a significant aspect of my salvation from the rigors of penury and homelessness would, months later, be in no small way directly attributed to his care and generosity.

It was also at The Star that I would befriend a young advertising salesman who would, in the months that followed, become my dear friend. And I would become his mentor. We would sail the harbour on his boat and I would bask in the glow of his companionship, friendship and irascible nature. Months later, he would become one of many who have mistaken my generosity and capacity for friendship for a seemingly never-ending supply of energy to be relentlessly drained. Exhausted. Our friendship capsized on an immutable point of contention: that I was in love with him and he was not in love with me. Whatever it was, I had actually became fatigued by his constant need, hunger and demand for every ounce of energy I had. On one memorable occasion, even his sister saw fit to warn me that I was being used up.

One night, as I was on my way to the boat with takeway dinner for the two of us, he called my mobile and suggested that it might not be a good time for me to come over—even though I was responding to his call for my company (and takeaway food delivery services). He had someone coming over who he would, er, prefer to spend time with. And at that moment, I burnt him off ... like a leech. I never saw or spoke to him again ... and even now, his attempts to re-establish contact with me are met with a perfunctory and entirely necessary resentful silence.

homo

One of the greatest achievements of my life was the little magazine I published in Sydney called homo. The concept and the look of homo had come to me while I was wandering dazed, confused and dehydrated around the base of Uluru for the second time that day. He had leapt into my mind with such fierce and determined visual clarity that he was impossible to ignore.

Upon my return to Sydney, I immediately made him happen ... and after eleven issues (one every month), homo and my business collapsed under massive debts and my complete inability to continue to service the vision in real and meaningful ways. homo was to have been my future. In his short life, he had made an enormous impact. I had been celebrated as 'Homo Man' at ritzy Elizabeth Bay rooftop parties ... and he had gathered a tiny but loyal band of subscribers. But yet again, the grand theme of my life so far, continued to play out: that with two exceptions, no-one knew how to help me. They knew what they needed from me, and rarely hesitated to ask. But when I was capable of struggling to find the words and to ask for help ... or power with suggestion ... or even on one occasion, plead for support, nothing was forthcoming. And everything that might have been done by others to help me was conditional. Or absent. And homo vanished ... and with him, went my pride, my sense of achievement ... and my perception of a future.

It was a spectacular failure that even those closest to me have no concept whatsoever of the extent to which I was (and remain) incredibly damaged by it.

I've never understood conditions ... but I am beginning to like the idea of further exploring the concept. At least.

Selfishness: The context

Definitions of selfishness:
1. stinginess resulting from a concern for your own welfare and a disregard of others;
2. Selfishness is, at base, the concept and/or practice of concern with one's own interests in some sort of priority to the interests of others; it is often used to refer to a self-interest that comes in a particular form, or above a certain level; and
3. … is devotion to or concern with one’s own advantage or welfare to the exclusion of regard for others. Science and religion both teach selfishness: That the first rule of life is self preservation, which results in "me first" and the creed of materialism.

Quotes about selfishness:
1. He who lives only to benefit himself confers on the world a benefit when he dies. — Tertullian
2. Selfishness is the greatest curse of the human race. — William E. Gladstone
3. That man who lives for self alone, lives for the meanest mortal known. — Joaquin Miller

It's difficult to remember when the concept of selfishness first entered my orbit ... but it is not difficult to remember the many occasions when it had an incredibly destructive impact on my life. I am also not entirely sure what and when has triggered another's selfishness ... and how, in whatever way, I have been responsible for their action—their flagrant disregard for my feelings.

I have written about the selfishness of a past partner/lover/boyfriend. His constant, reckless and selfish pursuit of sexual intimacy with, well, anyone else—in much the same way as most fags I have known ... the sad, lonely, cock-obsessed tragics who think that finding themselves perched on the end of a stranger's cock in some way makes them far more worthwhile to society than they truly are. Or to themselves. Or to those who really care about them. The great misappropriation of esteem and value, suddenly and brutally equated to the length and breadth of a stranger's dick. Is this what the value of sexuality is? Does the sexual act—or perhaps sexual greed and need—trigger innate selfishness?

Or to be less (or perhaps more) specific: does the lack of emotional honesty in our lives gradually (or suddenly) instill in us faith in a belief that all else of real value and worth suddenly becomes expendable?

Does the crippling betrayal of one's unconditional trust and belief in the wholesome good and potential of a shared experience destroy our ability to be selfish? Are we so damaged by the experience that we move on and away ... silent, forever, about our needs in case someone destroys us again because we dare to allow ourselves to be open, accepting and vulnerable to them? Pathologically both naked and selfless for fear of being hurt to that extent ever again?

Is that the trigger? Is this the point at where one might feel incredibly alive and worthwhile ... even at the expense of another's needs, value and meaning in their life? And then, like some grotesque masquerade, buoyed with the ballast of this vain and fleeting conceit, they sail on—blissfully unaware that their worth is actually afloat on the decimation of another's.

Is this what 'learning selfishness' is?

In what circumstance and at what point do we decide that our needs have more priority to the needs of others? In my case, the quandaries and conflicts in my life have arisen because of the very opposite of selfishness ... selflessness: "having, exhibiting, or motivated by no concern for oneself; unselfish." (www.thefreedictionary.com). I don't want this to read as though I have a Jesus Complex, but somewhere along the line, my priorities have become incredibly skewed … I've bundled myself off in a corner somewhere ... to watch the paint dry.

Are we taught to be selfish? Do we learn to be selfless? Is there a point in our journey through life where we finally realise that, apart from only the good dying young, that those who pursue their goals and aspirations with dogged, selfish self-determination are the ones that get 'there'? I will be able to discount this possibility entirely in a future post ... but it doesn't change the overall challenge to the context of these qualities in the way we present to the world. Or ourselves, in the quiet, fearful hours of lonely contemplation.

Selfishness and selflessness are equally powerful and destructive forces. Selfishness, by its very definition, can't exist in isolation ... one needs the other. So is the act of one's selfishness made more potent by the extent to which it is matched by another's selflessness? Have I, in some way, added fuel to the fire by matching people's incredible selfishness with my own peculiar selflessness? Is it, perhaps, that one's selfishness is dramatically inflamed, and possibly even dragged into existence, by another's selflessness?

So what then happens when two equally selfish people meet? An explosion of need? And what happens when two equally selfless people meet? An implosion of equal velocity? A great spontaneous nothingness?

Or is selflessness simply Fear underwritten by Weakness? If I look at any number of the unhappy circumstances present in my life at the moment, I could take a completely different approach to each of them. I could say what I really think about how I really feel ... or I could do as I do—which is respect the other person's situation … a complicit and unholy alliance between a person who might have known better and a person who does, but is too afraid of confrontation that they silence the solution. Well, one of the solutions anyway.

Creating Theatre trained me to be selfless. My scripts would arrive in the rehearsal room, and from that point onwards, you value the contribution made by everyone who comes in contact with it, before handing the (un)true realisation of it over to the ensemble and releasing it to the many relationships it is to go on and experience: the actors, the technicians, the audience ...

Creating Theatre, in a way, drills the capacity for honest reaction out of you. It creates the circumstances and the environment in which your once perfect vision exists in hybrid form … possessed by others ... spoken, felt, watched, and listened to by people often not of your choosing. And yet as the creator you are silent. Immune.

It is a precious and rare exchange, and one that does not necessarily belong in the domain of business ... or even life generally. That, I think, demands the very personification of the Law of the Jungle:

Can I fuck it? Will it fuck me?
Can I kill it? Will it kill me?
Can I eat it? Will it eat me?

And when the Australian actress Leah Purcell warned me that I "had bad magic happening on that stage" only hours before my Opening Night of the Sydney Film Festival, I should have handled my response differently. Very differently. But that is another story ... and one it is time we shared.

The Candidates: Part 1

Sometimes, in fact many times, I have been known to seek revenge. The desperate need for vindication and the unmistakable feeling that, yet again, someone has misinterpreted my genuine gifts of skill, support, caring and goodwill as weakness ... things to be fingered—sharply and abruptly. Abused.

There's a theme peddling furiously along the bicycle path that is my journey through life at the moment ... and it's called Self Interest. Selfishness. "Me! Me! Me! Me at all costs! ... including yours." The "Fuck your needs! What about ME!" Broadway-esque showtune in G Major, performed with almost monotonous regularity by people I always imagined might have known better.

At the many and various times my feet have slipped off the pedals, I have always slowly regained my balance ... accompanied by that familiar voice in my head, howling me down for being "so fucking nice and understanding and helpful and generous ALL THE TIME": reminding me cursorily that people really only ever really care about themselves ... that when push comes to shove, black to white, Labor to Liberal, gay to straight, and broke to flush ... people will put their needs first. Always.

So why haven't (and can't) I?

It's a complex equation. It's symptomatic of being a nice, well-meaning, genuine, caring kind of a guy. I was brought up to be. There was always plenty of everything in our home ... and apart from the occasional religion-inspired fracas, the ebb and flow of daily life throughout my childhood was practically effortless. Simple. And fair. Incredibly fair.

The further you depart from valuing and holding to fairness and equality in your life, the greater the perils you face. As systematically, people placed their own needs somewhere much higher on the hierarchy of needs than mine (or the needs of those I represented) I began to realise that there was a fatal flaw in my persona. I became, almost by default, persona non-grata. I blindingly assumed that it would all work out in the end ... that they would see the error of their ways and embrace my contribution and meaning with respect and appreciation. That they would stop using my seemingly never-ending supply of capability. My skills. My Goodwill. My Support. My Cash. And My Creativity.

The mind fuck has always been in the wash-up. On a number of occasions over recent years, the actuality of an experience has been devastated as a direct result of the actions of almost impossibly selfish and self-interested people. Their power over me has always been what they offer(ed): knowledge, experience, adventure, achievement, excitement, a contribution to our society and our culture, validation ... and the payment of a modest invoice at the end of it all. Or not.

Over the past two years I have walked away from a number of experiences completely fucked over. Ruthlessly and rigorously bruised. Insulted. Offended. And almost broke. There has been the kindness of near-perfect strangers who have helped me up and set me right. They, too, will get theirs.

Am I bitter? Quite possibly ... I will let you be the judge. But in the meantime ... there's a couple of stories I would like to share with you.

The power of ...

One. After. Another.

They are the minute breathes of personified or objectified real creative thought ... the pulses and impulses littering the soundscape. They are pollution, clarity, obscurity and mystery – as much as they are confounding, confronting, instructionist and obligatory. They are history, present and future. They are gifts and they are returns. They are the wrong size and the wrong colour. They are inappropriate, hateful, racist, sexist and politically opportunistic.

They are doors or windows slamming shut and shattering glass. And silence. Or both.

They are wind, rain, fire and dancing. They are laughter and tears, resolve and dispute, common and uncommon ... they are the sun, the moon, the planets and they are the way we know how to get there – and what it looks like and feels like when we do.

They are coming home. And leaving again.

They are a look. A sound. A scent.

They are fear, apprehension, joy and derision.

They are life and they are death.

They are what it looks like and feels like.

They are what it tastes like. What it's made of. What colour it is ... how long it takes ... where it happens, why it happens, how it happens, who knows it's happening, happened, about to happen.

They are where they are and with whom. They are why. When. How.

They are what if, what was, what might be, what could be, should be and they are what can never be.

Maybe. Maybe not.

They are characterful and characterless. They are charming and abusive, seductive and repulsive. They find themselves aligned in long-winded paragraphs of exposition and they also find themselves ejaculated into being within short sharp rounds of gun fire or argument. They argue and forgive. They expect and they resist creating expectations. They are barren and furtile. They hate and they love, cloud and clear, close and near, rain, sleet, snow and desert.

They eat and regurgitate, skate, ski and turn keys – opening locked doors, chests, firing engines of cars, motorbikes and triggering deadlocks. And guns.

They are safe and unsafe. They arouse and ignore, they save and they fail. They shoot to kill and they run for their lives. They explore and explode. They walk, ride and ramble.

They fly ... and they hurtle toward the ground. Crashing and burning. They start fires and cheat death by seconds. Or not.

They burn buildings, capsize ocean liners and pluck rotten fruit from the desiccated earth. They exercise and exorcise. They have faith, a little or none. They believe in everything, something or nothing.

They are more than the sounds that come out of Actors' mouths. They are everything we see, hear, feel, experience, understand, misunderstand, loathe, love, admire and detest about the world of sound and vision on screen. Any screen. Any poster. Any trailer. Anywhere.

I, for one, won't miss The Golden Globe Awards this year. The worth of one is the value of many.

Angels on pinheads

I've been living and working back in Melbourne now for four months. It was going to be three ... but then I've never been especially good at estimating the amount of time something will take.

Since I have been back, I have interrupted the lives of some wonderful, dear friends. We have sung and danced around the messy details of our mid-life crises and I have often wondered where in the journey of my life I would 'be' now if it hadn't been for the Fag, Interrupted-esque sojourn in the harbour city for seven years. But as James Goldman, in his The Lion In Winter script, puts it: "'What if ...' is a game for scholars. What if Angels sat on pinheads?"

I am constantly moved and provoked by the (in)different circumstances of many of the people I knew almost a decade ago. One of my dearest (and most reliable) co-bar-propper-upper-ers is now on heart medication and rarely drinks. For he and I, it's recently become something like an arduous garden-path kind of a walk to our local for two ... or more. I think about calling him and asking him out to the pub a little less often - especially now that it appears to be a matter of life or death. For him, in any case.

And some of the people I have known in this lifetime are achieving truly wonderful things ... and like a ratty little mongrel puppy, I yap and nip at their heels - celebrating their deserved success: like this extraordinarily beautiful work.

Evolutionarily speaking

How do we evolve? Not as a species ... but as individuals? ... and how do we measure the extent to which we have evolved? If, in fact, we have. Or ever do. The habits of our lives are fascinating paradigms - within and without which, we know and sometimes observe ourselves. Living. Or not living. Existing. Or subsisting.

I am preparing myself for a major change in the habit of my life. My collision with the concept of mortality was extremely interesting. Punishing, in fact. I bought myself a little spiral notepad to write down all the aspects of my life that I want to examine in more detail ... and possibly change. Or not. The important thing is that I am going to rigorously interrogate every aspect of my life and its value (or lack of value) to me.

The first topic, interestingly enough, is the lack of a relationship in my life. Love. Skin-tingling intimacy ... and a perpetual state of arousal. Days in bed fucking. Kissing. Touching. Wanting for nothing ... except maybe the possibility to disappear further into each other than is biologically possible.

I started with this topic because it is the one by which most people judge me most harshly. Apparently, because I am a single man, I am "lonely" ... "sad and lonely" ... "bitter" ... "fat, sad, lonely and bitter" ... "lacking in self-esteem" ... chronically. But other people's judgment of me is almost entirely lame conceit in the face of the extent to which I am capable of judging myself. And have been, mercilessly, for a number of years.

Now it is time to change a few things.

*****

I had a boyfriend once. He lived in Elsternwick and I lived in Balaclava. We met at a gay men's sauna. We fucked all night. And exchanged telephone numbers. I remember the beginning of this relationship as though it were yesterday. He, or I, would call ... and then we would both leave our homes at the same time and meet on Hotham Street. We would practically race the final few hundred metres of this hallowed turf towards each other. When I could be sure it was him walking toward me, my heart would skip a beat. A smile so wide and so wondrous would form of its own free will on my lips. In the distance, his body would change shape. As would mine. He would start running ... so would I. My visions of our embrace, our intimacy and our sex would force tempo changes in my pace and direction like nothing else ever could. Or ever has. I would find myself opening my arms to him ... collecting him, embracing him ... sweeping him and all his wonderful huggable, kissable, edible and almost impossibly desirable energy into my arms. We would overflow with joy ... and at the time, I was strong enough to experience it. Trust it ... and believe in the honesty and fairness of it. We exchanged the energy of love and we were both much stronger for it. This feeling, more than anything, is the one I miss more than any other.

Of course we moved in together. Of course it was lovely ... as you would expect having as much of everything good about someone and something is lovely. Right? Complete. Yes?

Over the years we share a beautiful apartment on Brighton Road, go on holidays together and bury his older brother. We would also acknowledge the anniversary of the death of his younger brother who had died before I had come onto the scene. He would mourn and I would hold him. He would lash out at the empty space around him and I would manage to fill some of it ... when appropriate, and nurse him into a sobbing almost-stillness. And eventually peace and silence ... where the mutual lack of understanding about the depth and extent of his pain and my share of it succumbed to something of another world - altogether.

*****

I have always believed that relationships end the way they begin ... in fact, I guarantee it. The one thing I have observed about the end of relationships is that where they begin (in my case, a gay men's sauna) is where they will end. And one thing is certain ... they will end. I lost my boyfriend in the mist ... somewhere near, I have always imagined, where I had found him. One night, some weeks after our hideously acrimonious separation, he fronted up to a local pub where my friends and I were drinking and dancing. He professed undying love and remorse for his actions (fucking any of our mutual friends had been the final rule I had dared to make ... which he had, of course, broken). He was forcefully escorted out of the bar and on to the street (by a couple of my friends and the security staff) and warned to stay away from me. He did. And always has - ever since.

*****

Coming back to Melbourne has, in the way similar to that of a sudden breeze flipping the pages of your newspaper over as you read it, ensured that certain chapters of my development ... my evolution ... have been held up for cheery reminiscence. I have scooted past our old apartment building on a couple of occasions in taxis, cars and on trams. I, like I am sure most of us do, select the happy memories to consider first. Our balcony garden and our huge, real Christmas Tree. Our holidays to Broken Hill, Rutherglen and Millawa. The Alpaca Farm.

But ultimately it is the pain of betrayal and loss which slowly rises to the surface ... and it is my conscious and worthwhile choice to never offer so much of my self, my time, my energy, support and love to any one ever again. Except possibly myself. I know people who are bound in loveless knots masquerading as relationships. I see compromised potential and sense discomfort that makes my heart sad and my head spin with boredom generated by the relentless saga of their sadness and frustration. I see rules being made and broken ... and I see expectations fallen short of - well short of. I hear tension and sadness in their voices and their life rhythms are corrupted by futile attempts to accept what others of us refuse to even acknowledge - the consolation prize. I watch dark clouds, not of their making or intention, hover over too much laughter and delight. I watch them defending themselves from their fears of lonliness by barricading themselves behind a wall of toilet-paper feebleness - built of false hopes and unrealistic expectations. Lies, fantasies and delusions.

Aloneness ... and the incomparable joy of individual freedom is the thing I value more than anything in the world. I always have. And I always will. I have known love ... and it was life-changing. So is compromise, but for entirely different reasons. I, for one, would prefer to live without one than to have to suffer the other.

There is, after all, a world of difference between being lonely and being alone.

Image The evolution of man

Death's Door: Part 1

Last Thursday was one of the most interesting days of my life. No, truly. Fascinating. Confronting. Frightening. Over-whelming ... in fact, awe-inspiring.

I had spent the better part of the day at a press approval with my associate James. It had been a long and ultimately fruitless exercise. Never in the life of my small business have I been unable to approve a job on the press. On some occasions it has been necessary to slightly alter the balance of the inks ... but on this occasion, there were significant problems with the job and it was with considerable reluctance that I (un)happily agreed to compromise the considerable value of my eye for detail in defining flaws in a print job ... and let it go. The Press Manager guaranteed me that my little list of flaws would be corrected, but apparently I was not to see the fruit of this particular promise. To his credit (and perhaps mine as the Designer and Finished Artist) he rather humbly acknowledged that I had set them a complex and difficult task. I was challenging the press (and the people who operate it) to deliver a brochure of such technical superiority that it would be some hours before they were happy to press the 'Go' button on the job.

James dropped me back at my office and I sat down at my computer to look through a dazzling array of emails that had flooded my inbox in my absence.

The chest pain started almost immediately ... a clamping, cramping pain of such immense, polarising discomfort that I thought I was going to pass out where I sat. My computer monitor was suddenly blurry and I was almost completely thrown by the thin layer of persperation almost bubbling to the surface of my forearms, my chest and - somewhat unusually I thought, my neck. My breathing was short and shallow and the tips of my fingers were tingling. The immediate fear was brain-numbing ... and my first instinct was to lie down on the floor of my office and relax. Breathe. Relax. The usefulness of years and years of breathing classes (I trained to be an opera singer for a long time ... and an actor for longer) evaporated. Try as I may, I could not 'send my breath' any further into my body than the top of my lungs, which were now aching and contracting ... as if someone else was doing my breathing for me.

The temptation to yield to the panic was overcome by my immense proclavity for common sense. I knew I was in a danger zone because, since I was about ten, I have known that I have "a heart problem". An irregular heart-beat. A semi-blocked left ventricle - the ventricle (valve) which is responsible for pumping oxygenated blood from the heart on its journey through my body. I have never been able to over-exert myself physically ... and at the risk of being considered weak and ineffectual (two attributes I despise in people of my sexual inclination), I have always managed a show of strength.

But not on this occasion ... which, unlike previous 'chest pain dramas', was rendering me totally and utterly inert. And afraid for my life.

My breathing was becoming shallower and shallower ... to the point where I thought I was, shortly, not going to be able to inhale at all. I prised myself from the floor and, gripping the edge of my desk, dragged myself up from the floor (which had provided no respite whatsoever from the pain) and fell back into my chair.

I've heard and read many descriptions of an episode of chest pain ... and every one of them fled my mind and my consciousness with record-breaking speed and alacrity: "concrete slab" ... "knives" ... "squeezing the air out of me" ... "such immense pressure" ... "unable to control the depth of my breathing" ...

Hunched over like a man 20 years my senior, I walked up the corridor to the stairwell at the back of my office building and did what I always do when I feel stressed and out of my depth ... not to mention my comfort zone: I had a ciggie.

Well, the tiniest bit of a ciggie ... because inhaling was impossible. My lips and my mouth were willing, but my chest and my lungs were not. I gagged on the smoke and immediately stubbed the cigarette out in my full to over-flowing ashcan. I sat on my 'smoking step' and wondered if this, in fact, was going to be the end of my life. Laughingly, I thought first and foremost about the amount of work I have on at the moment. Deadlines for this job ... and that. Concepts and ideas to be submitted. "Typical!" I remember thinking. "Here I am ... as busy as I have ever been - and now I have to go and have a fucking heart attack!"

I was amazingly unsentimental. Fear of what was happening overrode every other mental capability. I immediately wondered who in the building I would ask (and want) to help me. I pondered how to ask ... when to ask ... and, rather innocuously, decided that if I was going to shit myself (as people apparently do when their bodies go into death-throes) whose life did I have the right to change to that extent? In whose arms and at whose feet was I going to writhe in pain. And cry. And beg.

It pained me to discover that there was no-one within my immediate surrounds who I could turn to. I was on my own. It's the way I like it.

I knew the extent of this pain - not to mention the time it had gone on for - was a bad sign. A very bad sign.

I staggered back to my office and closed the door. I sat in my chair and Goggled 'heart attack symptoms'. I devoured every syllable of every piece of information like a vulture ... at the same time, buying myself great swathes of relief in the realisation that even though I was in such complete agony, nothing else like what was being described was happening to me. There was no pain in my head or my arms. Yes, the pain was immense and uncomfortable, but it wasn't like what was being described on the two or three websites that trumpeted information about the possibility of my impending and immediate demise.

And then it hit me. A stab of sheer eye-watering and mouth-drying pain in my heart like I have never experienced. I groaned from the intensity of it ... and with one hand to my chest, I grabbed my keys, my wallet and my mobile phone and decided to walk the four or five blocks to the Alfred Hospital.

I considered my options for company and support as I left the office ... and as I shuffled, blindly bound with pain along the footpath outside our building on my way to Emergency ... I wondered who in the world I would chose to die in the arms of.

And to what I imagine will be my unending surprise, I decided I wanted that person to be A Complete Stranger.

Madness

David Walliams plays a character in the television series Little Britain who walks through scenes making 'boock boock' noises ... clucking noises ... like a chicken. 'She' is one of the least sentimental characters in what is most certainly one of the bleakest of scenarios in the show ... and I have always been curious about the likely motivations for her inclusion - but no more so than this afternoon, when, on my way to the office with my takeaway coffee, a woman was walking along behind me making identical sounds. I glanced over my shoulder to see whether someone was taking the piss, as it were ... but no. Here, on Chapel Street (the very epicentre of Melbourne's Fashionista set and an almost impossibly ironic choice of location), was a woman as mad as the day is long, clucking away while strolling along the footpath.

Our little gaggle of pedestrians arrived at a set a traffic lights and a Little Red Walking Man. Others, perhaps as bemused and bewildered as I, moved out of her way. Some struck a pose of airhead aloofness ... others giggled. I looked on with a sanctimonious, self-rightedness pity. As the Little Red Walking Man was replaced by a Little Green Walking Man, we all stood completely still. Mad Woman glanced briefly from the middle-distance surrounding her to the ground and said "I hate going first". As I stepped from the footpath onto the road, Mad Woman followed and began to cluck away again.

My thought, as I wandered down a side-street toward my office was: "There, but for the grace of God, go I."

****

Madness has always fascinated me. A large number of characters in plays I have written could quite easily, if not a little too lazily, be described as 'Mad'. I wrote a play many years ago called Memories, Melodies and Madness which enjoyed a world premiere in London (and great reviews!) and a season in Melbourne.

In the play, four dead women relive the final night of their lives and, guided and encouraged by a Virgil character, are given the opportunity to take responsibility for each of their roles in their shared tragedy and cross over to the Afterlife. One of the characters succeeds. The others do not ... and for them, their fate is to continue to re-live the final night until they are at peace with their responsibility for what occurred. As the character who was finally at peace began to cross-over into her new life, the play began again - playing identically to the way the performance had started. It was my interpretation of the Catholic 'Purgatory' ... the Christians' 'Hell'.

In London, it received rave reviews and played to packed houses. In Melbourne, at the height of an unseasonal Melbourne heatwave (such is my fucking luck!) we had to cancel several performances due to the fact that the old theatre we were performing in had no air-conditioning which resulted in a temperature in the back few rows of raked seating of close to 40°C.

At the conclusion of one performance, as the play 'began again', a woman in the audience suddenly realised what was happening. She let loose with an audible gasp of recognition and an almost painful whimper of realisation ... as the lights snapped to black. She sat in her seat in the theatre for almost half an hour after the performance had ended ... staring at the stage. The rest of the audience had long since left and she remained - at one with the work and her experience of it.

I have been incredibly fortunate to experience a number of moments like this throughout the many years I spent making theatre. There was the young man who, upon seeing my play The World ... According to Timothy Cross promptly returned to another performance with his Mum, having gone home and 'come out' to her. He brought his Mum to see my play because he believed that the experience of it would be something that would inform her understanding of who her son was ... and what he was going through.

****

At some point in the not too distant past, something else came to mean something more to me than the collection of these experiences I was proudly gathering to keep my heart and soul fed and at peace.

I wish I knew what it was.

Bouncing balls of distraction

Sometimes it's as though time has stood still. Sometimes it's as though I never went away. The resistance to change is something that, deep in the database of my experiences in this lifetime, I am fighting to reject. Sometimes I feel as though I am winning ... but then that snide little voice that patrols the filing cabinet of my memory reminds me that I am, in fact, losing. Hopelessly. The shackles of habit and the fatigue of getting up in the morning and expecting it all to be different are wearing me down. Thank the Universe for Wimbledon!

I went to Wimbledon when I lived in London. As you do. I used to go to The Australian Open as well when I lived in Melbourne in my previous incarnation. I love the tennis. And apart from the excellent perve value, it provides me with the opportunity to stretch my spectator muscles ... those particular muscles certain people possess that ensures they never compete in a sporting arena of any kind. We watch. And cheer. Criticise and cajole. We are attached to the sport in a unique way. We are the energy that makes it possible for those playing whichever game it happens to be to indulge in the spirit of a true, honest and fair contest. We are the atmosphere. We represent a share of the prize money (and if you've ever been to Wimbledon you'll know what I mean!) We are the reason. We are what makes it all worthwhile. Sport in the absence of spectators is, well, training.

Much like much of the last ten years of my life.

I love Tim Henman. He's a cute little English tennis player who, now 32 years old, is nearing the end of his career. I've always related to Timmy, in a strange kind of way. He's the one who has never been quite good enough. Good, yes, but not quite good enough. He's never won Wimbledon ... in fact, I'm not sure that he's ever won a Grand Slam anywhere in the world. But he shows up and gives it his best shot. It's just that there is always, eventually, someone on the opposite side of the net whose shot(s) are better than Timmy's best.

Two nights (AEST) ago, his match against Carlos Moya (an outstanding 9.5 on the perve value scale) was stopped due to bad light. It resumed the night before last at two sets all and 5 games a piece in the final set. There was not an empty seat in the fabulous 2,000 extra seats stadium when Timmy and Carlos resumed their battle. I was, literally, on the edge of my seat. The usually subdued and polite English crowd were almost rowdy ... as rowdy as they know how to be in any case. Timmy was giving it his all ... and Carlos was face down on my pillow ... oh, sorry ... giving it his all too. The final set went with perve ... oh shit, sorry ... serve – until Carlos served a double fault and handed over the match. Timmy had won! ... and in a split second, the perennial loser had become a winner. A big winner!

It was a sensational match ... and a moving occasion. As the camera prowled around Timmy, I could tell that this win was especially important to him. There was no knee-bending ... no artful and indulgent collapses onto the grass ... no crass, grand winner-takes-it-all gestures ... no racquet gymnastics. Just an almost quaint smile and humble acknowledgement of the support of the capacity crowd. Each one of those spectators a force of will and determination ... that when combined, quite possibly gave Timmy something of the force he needed to conquer his opponent.

I couldn't sleep for hours that night. The Universe dropped a concept into my mind. "Geoffrey", she whispered ... "are you intending to reach the end of your life and be prepared to accept that, even though you were good, you were just never good enough"?

Last night I started watching Roger Federer play. I didn't last long. Quite suddenly, something made complete sense.

Sydney: The Beginning

It was always going to be Potts Point. I never really pretended to understand why. I still don't. I just knew. Maybe I was Mr Potts in another life? Or Mrs Potts? ... but that's all beside the point. I knew where I wanted to live, and even in spite of a brief and entirely unsatisfying half-hour fling with Waterloo, there was nowhere else in Sydney I was prepared to live.

I remember the moment I made the decision to come and live in Sydney vividly ... as though it were yesterday.

I was happily entrenched in a strangely alluring apartment-share with an ex-Sydney girl - MW* - in St Kilda. She decided to go to Sydney for a couple of weeks to catch up with old friends and re-imagine everything this city had meant to her. She left Melbourne and drove up in her red MX-5. As Sydney Girls do ... or rather, did. (Sydney-dwellers should try it sometime - counting them. I bet you won't see one. It's the Peugot 206CC now, in case you're even remotely interested.) One night, she called me. The collision with her past had been slightly more intense than she had been fully prepared for, and my sensible, sturdy, reliable and trustworthy presence was requested. She would fly me up, and we could drive back to Melbourne together. There were places to stay and people to meet. It was an offer I found impossible to refuse. Such is the continuing lead role of Fate in the drama series of my life.

I, and we, had a fucking ball! M was well-connected in this town. We couldn't walk down Oxford Street without bumping in to primed, buffed and gorgeous porn-star quality fags - to whom M was a long lost girlfriend ... sister. The kinship between certain faggots and certain women is a powerful, undeniable force of (un)nature. I will write about it more one day. M's girlfriends were all classic Sydney Girls: size 8 with a powerful (if not life and sanity threatening) determination to be size 6. They all spoke with record-threatening speed and haunted the domains of Kirribilli, Double Bay, Surry Hills and (by fag-default) Darlinghurst. They all had awesome jobs, fabulous cars, brilliant friends ... and a life-expectancy of 40 years. They loved me because M did. I was a well-connected, professional Melbourne fag. I was educated and sociable. I was also tall, dark and (apparently) handsome. That's the thing about Sydney: as long as you fit the grid and don't threaten the status-quo, you're welcomed with open arms - and occasionally legs. Have a contradictory opinion, a (different) world view, a belief in something other than instant gratification, a distinct lack of selfishness, or be able to differentiate (and dissect) Healthy Ego from Fragile Ego, and your days will be numbered. You'll become an Alexander Downer. People will find it difficult (and ultimately refuse) to acknowledge your existence. It's a situation faithful readers of this blog of mine will know I am intimately familiar with. It's like farting loudly in Church ... or a lift. There's really no point trying to redeem yourself.

In the (mid '90s) days since my heady $500 a week Speed addiction, I'd stacked on the weight. Then there was the horse-riding accident which 'crippled' me for six months (8 weeks in hospital) and finally put an end to my three-times-a-week workout routine. Needless to say, I would rapidly descend down the Sydney Fuck Chain once I was living here ... but for the time being, at least, I was Top of the Pops. I snorted cocaine through each nostril (like a true professional) and I could tell entertaining stories (especially while coked off my fuckin' head! I mean, who can't manage that?). I adored M ... and protected and defended her. I told her friends about our wonderful life together in "Melboring" ... convincing them that the city was, indeed, a consolation prize: where damaged souls who had paid the Sydney price of sacrifice, soul-less-ness, suspicion and loneliness came to heal. Or learn to love again. Or step out of the ring for a moment to consider what it is they were fighting for. Or against. Ultimately, it was ourselves ... but I'm getting ahead of myself a bit. Whack that dinner plate in the microwave and rack up another line guys! After all, we ain't gonna be eating anything off it!

It was a beautiful summer day. I was having some 'time out'. By The Harbour. I adore Sydney's sensational Harbour. It has dominated so many moments in my time here. Entirely. The best fun. The best feeling. Without fail. And one day this week, I will go back to where it all began to say goodbye. For now.

I was sitting on a rock in front of Mrs Macquarie's Chair with my shoes off and my jean-legs rolled up. The water of Sydney's monstrously hypnotic Harbour lapped at my ankles. I looked to my left and glimpsed the sight of the sun setting behind the sails of The Opera House. The Bridge was glittering. A little ferry was departing and the bigger Manly Ferry was streaming seaward. A plane was coming in to land and the entire vista was shimmering and shivering. I decided, at that moment, to come and live in Sydney. I said as much to myself. Aloud. I breathed it all in ... and felt like I had taken the first breath of my new life. I was overcome with optimism and excitement. Potential. A dream. A direction and a focus. A new beginning.

A couple of days later, after having done a quick reconnaissance of rental property availability (and cost) in Potts Point, M and I said farewell to Sydney and I drove her (and me) home to Melbourne. M slept almost the whole way ... waking only when we were about an hour or two out of Melbourne. The MX-5 held the road like the race car it truly is. I was at the wheel. I could return to Melbourne at speed because I knew that I would be packing up and leaving. Not straight away, but soon.

In the meantime, there was work to be done. Money to be made. Boxes to be packed. Truths to be denied. Friends to farewell. It was all so final. It was all so possible.

Fantasy versus reality would, yet again, be my downfall. There would be more than a couple of scrapes on the knee ... and there would be a sudden, frightening and ignominious collision with my sanity. But in the meantime, there was the open road and the MX-5.

And an exit clause.

*Initials have been used to protect the identity of particular individuals ... the details of whose lives, even though they are essential to the telling of my story, do not really belong in the public domain without their consent. I will, of course, feature this respectful consideration at my discretion.

Review: Sunshine

As a genre, Science-fiction has contributed to the cinema in a host of, often, quite inspirational ways. It is a complex and demanding genre, especially given that it deals with a vast range of psychological aspects, all underwritten by the great wonder and fascination we have for the mysteries of The Universe that lie beyond our Earth-bound human comprehension. In order for it to succeed, it must plug into our imaginations and our curiosity, our belief and our hope. In this increasingly cynical day and age, it's a significant task.

Ultimately, like so much of the real dramatic and cinematic torque in the world of Science-fiction, it all comes down to Fear, Faith, Fate, and Trust ... great big emotional states and frames of mind which underpin the truly great work in the genre (think Scott, Kubrick, Lucas, Spielberg).

In Sunshine, the year is 2057 and the sun is dying. Earth's (and our) last hope lies with a spacecraft, Icarus II, and her crew of eight who are sent on a mission to deliver a nuclear device into the core of the sun which, when detonated, will re-ignite it.

In the accompanying propaganda, the film makers admit to having taken some creative licence in resolving the issues relating, particularly, to the science. It's an odd apology, especially given that the word that follows the word 'science' in the case of this particular genre is 'fiction'. Unlike most genres (with the possible exception of some Horror films), Science-fiction offers the film makers unrestricted parameters within (and without) which to challenge and delight our well-reasoned understanding of all that is possible. In skilled hands, our notions of impossibility are discarded ... and we enter a world where dreams make sense, objects float, time is immeasurable by Earth-bound reason and standards, doors open and close with a hiss, and the atmospheric pressure outside will crush you in nano-seconds. In the world of Science-fiction, an audience's desire for an indefatigable raft of creative possibilities is the currency. Sense and meaning are exchanged for adventure and vision. Reality ceases to matter. It is the single greatest attraction the genre offers, and it is the standard by which we measure its effectiveness.

The screenplay for Sunshine is by Alex Garland - a writer in whom I have a great deal of interest. His novel The Beach was a rip-snorting, popularist, page-turner. A Gen X Lord of the flies. I was a back-packer once, and Garland faithfully (and most entertainingly) drew on the spirit of this particular mode of exploration: no care, no responsibility ... "I'm only this young and this carefree once so I'm going to do whatever I fucking well want". We've all met them: noisy, brattish, rude, obstreperous and inconsiderate. His dissection of the cult of commune was equally razor-sharp, and his study of the politics of power and how it impacts on our primal instinct for joy, carelessness and irresponsibility in our lives was quite brilliantly observed.

His novel The Tesseract was a marvellous, if not especially memorable, read. Cryptic and obscure, it was an intense study in the 'something evil this way comes' narrative. The way Garland's striking force intersected, interrupted and divided the characters in his book was thrilling and inventive. He discarded chronology and went for a splintering of time and place which he admirably sustained. Sure, it stumbled occasionally, but it is a compelling work from a young writer determined to take risks. A loud and original voice - a British version of (his mentor) Brett Easton Ellis (American Psycho). It was only a matter of time before he ended up writing science-fiction.

Garland's great skill (albeit still in development) is his disregard for conventional narrative. His is an ode to the unknown ... the questions as opposed to the answers - and his script for Sunshine is at its best when he is true to form. It's when the film demands the answers that we end up in a place beyond repair - textually and cinematically. There are flashes of his brilliance, especially in the wordless apology scene which is certainly the script's highpoint, but the way in which the script disintegrates into derivation (play name the source), conceit (a cynical reference to Ridley Scott's Alien about twenty minutes before the film makes several doomed attempts to mimic it), a stereotypical body-count cliché (with none of the Horror genre's nerve-shattering tension), and a messy and needlessly chaotic denoument is ultimately disappointing.

Director Danny Boyle (Trainspotting with Irvine Welsh's novel adapted for the screen by John Hodge, The Beach for which Hodge adapted Garland's novel, and 28 days later for which Garland wrote the screenplay) provides the film with an skillfully assured pace but Boyle is not yet quite as adept at handling the dynamics of an ensemble as he is with the journeys of one or two key players. His camera is, at times, quite obtrusive - which only lends weight to the sense of almost pedestrian contrivance as opposed to the (un)natural order and consequence of events as they unravel. The majority of his points of view ultimately rest uneasily as mute observer, resulting in a chronic lack of engagement with the action. It's all happening and we're there ... it just doesn't mean anything.

The performances by a stellar cast of young over-achievers (including Rose Byrne, Cillian Murphy, Chris Evans, and Jane Fonda's son Troy Garity), are similarly un(in)formed ... the over-riding sense being that they're going through their paces without a greater understanding of why. The roles (and the casting of them) owe a debt to Ridley Scott and Alien that is impossible to ignore. Apart from the fact that, early on, the ensemble appear in a 'dining room' identically lit from within the 'table' (as famously resolved by Alien's Cinematographer Derek Vanlint and Director Ridley Scott), the concept of ordinary people doing extraordinary tasks served Alien in ways that Boyle and his cast and crew can only try and hope to emulate. Byrnes' 'Cassie' is no Ripley, that's for sure ... and from that point onward, the casting and playing, almost inevitably, falter.

Production Designer Mark Tildesley (The Constant Gardener) delivers a stunning design for the spacecraft - the highlight of the film. Devotees of the genre will be captivated by the craft's design concept and will find the way the first ten minutes of the film unfolds quite mesmerising. Cinematographer Alwin H Kuchler (One day in September) has a ball with the exposure to life-threatening light (heat) and life-saving shade (cool) inherent in our crew's proximity to the sun.

The editing, by Chris Gill (28 days later), keeps the film moving briskly and really only suffers as a result of structural weak points in the action (which I am unable to write about in any detail here because they will reveal the plot). The original music (Karl Hyde, John Murphy and Rick Smith) is instantly forgettable.

Interestingly, having been released in the UK and Oceania, the film is not due for release in North America until September this year - presumably to ensure it qualifies for Academy Award® consideration. I am looking forward to the project where Boyle and Garland unite - true to their distinctive and unique forms and gifts.

Sunshine isn't it.

*****

Sunshine is in general release.
Director Danny Boyle; Screenplay Alex Garland; Cast Hiroyuki Sanada, Michelle Yeoh, Rose Byrne, Chris Evans, Troy Garity, Mark Strong and Cillian Murphy, Cliff Curtis; Co-producer Bernard Bellew; Producer Andrew Macdonald; Original Music by: Karl Hyde, John Murphy, Rick Smith; Cinematography by Alwin H Kuchler; Film Editing by Chris Gill; Casting by Donna Isaacson, Gail Stevens; Production Design by Mark Tildesley; Art Direction by Gary Freeman, Stephen Morahan. Denis Schnegg and David Warren (Senior Art Director); Distributed by 20th Century Fox.

Back to basics

I started this blog to serve me in my relentless pursuit of distraction ... a record of all of those hours spent clicking, Googling, oggling, surfing, reading ... and then, almost overnight, I was plunged back into the darkest recesses of the haunted house in which my memories of my time on the planet (so far) dwell.

I stopped writing because I had nothing to say. A large part of me still believes that. Plays are nasty bastards. One or two of mine have fallen onto the page almost effortlessly, where the penultimate challenge was keeping up with the conversations my characters were having with each other in my head. Others have simply stopped stone cold dead. Too complex. Too boring. Too much like something - and everything - else.

Simply too much.

They say that the hardest part about writing is the re-writing. And whoever "they" happen to be, are right. But a boy's gotta do what a boy's gotta do ... so I'm going to take a leave of absence from my beloved blog and get back to a script I abandonded late last year. I think it has potential. And I am grateful to the discipline of this funny little blog of mine ... and to my band of readers who have made all the difference to how confident I feel about opening up the Word file and trying again.

Thank you.

Scraps of distraction: Part 7

The new end

The thing about about abuse of any kind - emotional, physical, psychological, verbal, sexual - is that it stiffles and retards growth and development. On both sides of the act. The act of critical review is essentially no different. Whether they shove their hand down your pants and express like - or dislike - for what they feel, they've still shoved their hand down your pants. In life, it can be many things: rude, pleasureable, invasive, arousing, invited, uninvited, unexpected and a catalyst for many many things.

In the Theatre, it's the same. Ultimately though, it depends entirely on whose hand it is and how much you enjoy it down there. And where it leads ... and how soon after the initial mystery of the exchange, the mutual respect and consideration is lost to selfishness and greed. Savagery. The primal instinct for conquest. The hunger and appetite of the abuser at the expense of the curious consent of the person who might have continued to let them get off on the privacy of their desire.

In reflection, the saddest aspect of this entire journey for me was that yes, I did care about what the reviewers in London had said. Too much? At 25 years old, with your hand down your own pants and on the edge of the rest of your life, just how are you expected to comprehend, let alone know how to maintain and sustain that magical thing called "perspective"? ... not to mention know how to measure - precisely - what is "too much" of anything? It's futile ... pointless ... not unlike trying to measure what is "too long". Admirable sentiments I am sure, but the power of Perspective (not unlike the power of Denial) is not something that belongs in the domain of the young and adventurous. They come later. Like Regret.

Melodrama is drama without truth. And truth is that rare and fleeting almost instinctive breath of a moment in the theatre that is utterly and entirely impossible to capture. But it does exist. It's just very, very difficult to manufacture. You find it ... sometimes where you least expect it. It will sometimes chose to reveal itself in the perfect measure of time and place. But more often than not, it will elude you ... as was the case with many, if not most, of the performances of Tunnels without end I sat through in London.

You strive for it but it constantly eludes you. And the times in the theatre where truth has revealed itself, even fleetingly, remain my most memorable. I understand that now. And I seek it in everything I do.

Ireland's Brian Friel is my Master. William Shakespeare is too ... some of the time. So is Christopher Marlowe - all of the time. Arthur Miller most certainly delved deeply and often for the truth, but the truth of his writing was ultimately sabotaged by the truth of his significance to the lives of others and the turbulent times in which he lived. You need to look harder to find it in his writing. But it is there, especially in All My Sons - a magnificent, monster of play. And Timebends, his utterly compelling autobiography. Alan Bennett betrays truth with circumstance and his finely pleated structure. His becomes a convenient truth and he makes me uneasy. He is the very Englishness of contemporary English dramatists. Right up there with Alan Aychbourn. Aychbourn's truth is entirely of his own making which, in my mind, is akin to admitting that you'll never expect or allow it to appear in the work ... that it shall remain forever ellusive. It's a dangerous claim to stake ... because Theatre without Truth - or at the very least the eternal hope for its appearance - is Dead Theatre.

Tom Stoppard, a writer to whom I would be compared in a London review, is far too clever to be obviously seen to be truth-spotting.
David

Mamet

knows

(Beat)

it

will

(Beat)

appear

(Beat)

and

it

(Beat)

inevitably

(Beat)

does.

Because we imagine it has. Something this cleverly written and structured has to eventually reveal truth in one form or another.

****

I have tried many ways to deal with the what Alistair McCauley took from me. I have accepted - and resolved - my responsibility for it. I revisited the script, rewrote it, and staged a production of it in Melbourne which was fantastic. I learned. I developed. I changed. And I am grateful for the lessons.

Today I understand and accept that Alistair McCauley is - essentially - a thief. I often read his reviews (I read one today) and marvel at how he consistently uses the creative energy of others to write - essentially - about hate. And I still marvel at just how much hate he is truly - no, truth-fully - capable of. How bitter and miserable must he be, recognising how incapable he is of taking the kind of creative risks he is forced to endure in the dark with the less hate-filled. He mistakes fleeting Truth for wit, observation and cleverness. His. At least the blood of mine he spilled that day on The Green was bright red. Not black, toxic, poisoned, and oxygen-less - like his. I have gone on to make a great deal more theatre. He has, quite obviously, not gone on. I relish that fact.

Every act of critical review is like a kabob. There's onion, red capsicum, lamb, green capsicum, tomato and you. Having written an inestimable number of reviews since, I know a truth about McCauley - and myself - I wish more than anything I'd known on my knees on the grass in the middle of The Green all those years ago. Because everything that occured after it would have been different. I would have ensured that the responses to him were entirely different. I would not have allowed him to castrate me in the way I allowed him to then. I would not have allowed him to punish me for daring in quite the same way as I did then. I would, instead, have responded with the full strength and weight of my passion, and courage, and the sheer unbridled determination that had placed my magnificent attempt at his feet in the first place. All the saved-up-for way from Glen Waverley, Australia. In short, I would have cut off his fondling fingers - and the hand they were attached to.

His was a position of great privilege to that point in my life that we shared and I will hate - and I really mean Hate - him and his like forever for not deciding, instead, to find what there was to admire about my sprawling passionate ode to Fate and despair - as opposed to finding what there was to hate about both himself and me, as he gazed at his ugly and twisted reflection in the cracked mirror I was holding up to his face.

My solace, if you like, is to know that at the end of my life, I will at least have imagined what was possible. McCauley, and his like, will only be able to look back at how much they truly were beneath it ... and how, ultimately worthlessly, they instead, take anothers' creativity, passion and ability prisoner - captive in their own unenviable, lonely and creation-less cell of complete theatrical and literary insignificance.

They signify only The Reactionary my insightful and quite brilliant Mother dared to hope I would not become. I understand her fear of that happening for me in its entirety now: 'Where," she was asking "is the courage and originality in that?"

And it makes the act of making uncompromising theatre again in my life almost compulsory.

****

My journey through the memory of this life-altering experience abroad has been immensely painful. That much is probably obvious. What is perhaps not quite so obvious is the way I feel today, right now, about where the rest of my life will take me. And I will close this final chapter of a most remarkable reminiscence with this exchange which somehow, quite magically, The Universe delivered to me late last night.

It is an edited transcript from the ABC Radio's PM program in 2005 - and the interviewee, Michael Billington, is a reviewer for London's The Guardian newspaper.

MICHAEL BILLINGTON: I suppose what makes Pinter interesting as a writer and as a man, is that the plays themselves defy analysis. You can offer an interpretation, but you can never quite fully say what The Homecoming is about, what No Man's Land is about, what Landscape is about. I think that's partly what makes Pinter interesting and what links him with the great dramatists of the past – that there is a quality in his plays that is beyond rational explanation. And one of my colleagues ... I think brilliantly said, part of the pleasure of watching a Pinter play is not fully understanding what it is about.

Really, Mr Billington? Well touché.

And the "colleague" in question? Here, and I hope this will give you as great a thrilling and gut-busting laugh as it did me, is the unedited version:

MICHAEL BILLINGTON: ... And one of my colleagues, Alistair McCauley, I think brilliantly said, part of the pleasure of watching a Pinter play is not fully understanding what it is about.

If "brilliance" is defined by "not fully understanding" then I feel terribly sad and sorry for both you and your colleague. And terribly proud of myself and the literally hundreds of people who came to my play in London and loved and understood it - in spite of him.

Truthfully.

Thank you, Masters of Nothing ... and fuck you!

Scraps of distraction: Part 6

Ordinary miracles

Tunnels without end was a disaster. That much was obvious. A couple of the actors, who had been taken by complete surprise by the savagery of the attack, responded accordingly and began acting it as though it were some embarrassingly hideous C-grade drama. There was constant talk of it closing, but Sonia was maintaining the last semblance of her belief in herself, it, and me by keeping it running.

One night, Robert (Piotr) hit Billy (who was playing Valsa, one the maestro's lovers) and almost fractured his jaw. (Undisciplined actors in this particular play of mine would become synonymous with productions of it. In the Melbourne production, Nicholas, who was playing Piotr, would be hospitalised during a performance after a wayward punch to the side of his head from Josephine, the actress playing Sasha, his sister. Discuss.) Billy was refusing to go back on and had demanded that I be summoned to the theatre by management. I raced to the theatre and Billy and I sat in his dressing room while the interval was extended from twenty to almost 45 minutes. Thank God that The Tube runs 24 hours I can remember thinking. This poor audience aren't going to be out until well after midnight!

One night, when I actually happened to be in the audience, the sound system blew up about five minutes into the performance. "Bring it on!" I think I shouted aloud to the three other people that were there. The performance continued and I watched, in complete wonder and every-increasing astonishment, as a pair of impossibly small speakers were lowered from the bio-box window at the top of the right-hand side wall of the stage. They were slowly lowered only when people would have been looking at the opposite side of the stage. I know this, because I couldn't take my eyes off them! And the music duly returned. At interval, I learned that the Assistant Stage Manager had taken over calling the show while Helen had raced outside and up the road a little to rip the stereo system out of her car! The speakers that were being lowered to just above the heads of the actors were the ones from her fucking car! Bless her precious and inspirational heart!

Sadly, we had to let the ASM go. Not only couldn't the production afford him anymore, but he got the offer of another job in another show. I remember him trying to justify his departure to me. He needn't have bothered. The part of me that truly cared about everything that could possibly still happen had departed this production a long time ago.

One matinee afternoon, there was an audience of one (a disturbing fact that would also become synonymous with future productions of this play of mine. In fact, it is so synonymous with this play that I hope it happens again - and fully expect it to - in Sydney next year. I will actually be very disappointed if it doesn't). This charming man was on his way home to New York and he had read about Tunnels without end in the London Theatre Guide and thought he might like to see it. I walked in to the foyer while the staff were informing him that, given that he was the only audience member, the performance might not be going ahead ... and would he mind waiting to see if anyone else turned up. The Union's ruling was (and still is I understand) that if there were more people in the cast than in the audience, then by default, the performance could be cancelled.

The actors were ready. Our audience was ready. The bar was ready. Where was the problem? I asked the cast if they would agree to perform for two - the charming man and me - if he was prepared to become an audience of one. He confirmed that he was. I jokingly made him promise not to walk out (which is ironic really, because that's precisely what would happen in Melbourne.) We sat next to each other and the performance was fantastic ... and our audience member loved it. He cried at the end and apologised for having to rush off to the airport to catch his flight home.

A few nights later, I was at an open air Luciano Pavarotti concert with my friends from the Royal Opera. (We were seated in the row behind Princess Diana.) The concert was fantastic and when it ended, my friends suggested we head to the New End Theatre and have a drink with the actors. The axe was about to fall, and I should stop by and begin preparing myself to finally farewell the theatre which had become my home for the most amazing number of weeks of my life. How soon would it be, they joked, affectionately, before I could again take my friends to a theatre in London where a play of mine was being staged?

It was a wonderful suggestion and we piled into a cab. I immediately knew something was up the second we turned into New End. There wasn't a carspace to be seen. I joked to my friend Ian (who was the Royal Opera's Marketing Manager), that maybe they'd closed Tunnels ... without telling me and put something else on in its place. Our cab dropped us at the front door, and as I marched up to it, it opened from the inside. The front of house manager beamed at me.

"Where have you been all day and all night!" she screamed.

I saw Sonia appear behind her and I was dragged into the foyer. The doors into the auditorium opened and people - not person - slowly started to leave the theatre. Five ... ten ... surely that's got to be it! ... twenty ... thirty. I looked at Sonia who had her hands to her mouth. I felt Ian's hand on my shoulder. Forty ... fifty ... sixty ... I didn't know where to look.

My audience were shattered and many were wiping away tears. Some looked as though they'd just been bored out of their brain, but most of them looked as though they'd seen something. Sonia took my hand and dragged me up the stairs to the bar.

"I've been leaving messages for you at home all day and all night! Where have you been?"

She didn't wait for an answer before placing a large newspaper clipping in one of my hands and a glass of champagne in the other. With my friends peering over my shoulder, I read something I barely recognised: our first good review. Not a great review, but a positive one all the same. Sure, the "destination of the journey" was "a little vague" ... but the drama was "Magnetic!" Magnetic! ... and the costumes were "stunning!"

The review had come out in one of the local Hampstead newspapers and apparently, the reviewer - a woman - was notorious for determining the success or the failure of productions in the local area: and "the journey" with Tunnels ... was, apparently for her, "certainly worth it!" The bar slowly filled up with people who toasted me and applauded. My friends hugged me and, as the actors got news that I was in the house, they too came up and celebrated. It is Helen's hug I will remember as long as I live. It said "This is actually what you deserve! This is what we all fucking deserve!"

And Tunnels without end played to almost capacity audiences for the rest of his run home. I know, because every night, I would stand outside and watch - in complete wonder and with great pride - the audiences pour out of the theatre. The conversations at the bar were epic, intense and incredibly rewarding for me - as they often are when you are among friends.

One day shortly before the end of the run, Sonia called me and told me to come to the theatre. Something else quite amazing had just happened.

I dashed to the theatre and raced up to her office. She handed me a fax: a request for fifteen tickets. The 'charming' man who had dropped by and watched the play on his own was bringing fourteen of his friends all the way from New York for the closing night performance. Not only had this never occurred at the New End Theatre before, but this booking for fifteen plus the bookings already made on the day - in person and on the telephone - meant that I had broken the New End Theatre's record for the most number of tickets sold in one day!

My dribbling, snotty-nosed little spastic had found his home ... and, more importantly, his audience.

****

The final performance was one I can barely remember. I knew it would be over and a great part of me desperately wanted it to be. Still. And as it came to its conclusion, I felt more overwhelmed than I had ever felt before ... and possibly since. As the actors came out onto the stage for the first time to take their final bows, fifteen people stood up and threw red roses onto the stage. I was actually quite unsentimental about the occasion until I saw Michaela in tears. She bent over and collected a rose and held it up, high in the air and looked at me like I have never been looked at in the theatre since. Everyone but me was on their feet. I couldn't stand up.

I managed one final look at the image that I had created on stage and buried my head in my hands.

It was the first time since I had left my beautiful dog Kimberley with my friends in Australia all those months ago that I had actually been able to cry.

Scraps of distraction: Part 5

The Reviews

The telephone at home started ringing uncommonly early. It woke me, but - as Fate would have it - not in time to answer it. I threw on some clothes and raced out the door to the newsagent. I knew there would be at least one review this morning. A dash through the park and then across The Green, one of those quaint little parks and gardens that try, valiantly, to save London from turning in on, and suffocating, herself.

The fatigue of the weeks beforehand had coloured the production a rather pleasing rich shade of chocolate-pink grey - almost as though it was happening in spite of everyone associated with it. And the bookings were strong. I had had many glorious conversations with members of the audience, some of whom had once sat with me at the bar until sunrise.

Later today there was also to be a meeting at the theatre with a couple of Producers who wanted to mount a touring production of it. A Number One Touring Company - whatever that meant. In the meantime, my heart, my ambition and I rushed to confirm that we were a success. I grabbed copies of all the morning newspapers (no mean feat in London) and started my return, bubbling with nerves and anticipation, to the house. My landlady (and great friend), Annie, would have the coffee going and together, we would pour over the reviews: "An important new voice in the theatre ... " ... "Brilliant! Stunning!" ... "Don't miss this amazing production before it transfers - as it inevitably will - to the West End!"

I am halfway across The Green. A review! The Financial Times! A quarter trademark pale orange page, right across the bottom! "Wow! Geoffrey! Look at you!" I scream, guiltily and silently, to myself ... "look at all that space they've dedicated to a review of my ... "

"Poor Tchaikovsky! His life was sad enough and one would have liked to spared him some of the rubbish that has been made of it since - of which Ken Russell's The Music Lovers and this play, are, alas, prime examples."

It is like someone has suddenly removed both my legs. I can't feel them ... and I drop to the ground like a wing-less bird. Hard. Thud. I try and keep a hold of all of my newspapers but they slide from my arms onto the damp grass around me. I grapple with The Financial Times and read the opening paragraph again ... and again ... and again. To be sure it actually says what I have just read. My heart is beating so impossibly fast. There must be some terrible mistake!

There is ... and apparently it's me.

The review is by Alistair McCauley and his review is as painful to imagine as it is to read. He slices the actors, my play, my production, my dialogue, my direction, my ambition and my imagination - my everything and my all.

My mind flashes back to many years earlier. I was working as a stock controller for an abbatoir when 'the boys' thought it might be fun to take me on a tour of the slaughterhouse. I remember watching, helplessly mute, as a wide-eyed and terrified bull was clamped into place on his muddy death row. Seconds later, the bull-bolt penetrates one side of his quivering head and appears out the other side. How do you describe that look on his face? The bull-bolt retracts, and with an unbearable shudder, the beast crumples to its knees. Staring balefully. Twitching. Its jaw hits the ground. And eventually dead.

There is no way for the heart and soul of an artist to know how to respond to the slaughter of everything they imagined they were. It is a complete annihilation of everything I have held so near and dear to my heart for months. And everything that was to be my future. McCauley ridicules the emotion and relentlessly eye-gouges every aspect of the thing I have dared to put before him. He picks "particularly awful" lines of dialogue with which to misquote me. I can't sort out the array of nauseous reaction I am having. It's like a fatal internal hard-disk error. Irretrievable. My memory is erased and I only have this damning evidence of my complete and utter worthlessness as a risk-taking creative being. (People often ask me why I don't get a chest x-ray. It's actually quite simple. I've already had the worst news of my life.) Here, on my knees, pathetically surrounded by my newspapers and fighting to contain a sound I don't recognise - my creative being has been hacked to bloodless pieces. And I am not actually sure how I am going to survive my reaction to it.

Of course! I'm not supposed to.

I don't see Annie running across The Green toward me. She has answered the telephone to someone from the theatre telling her to keep me away from the newspapers. It's been a wholesale slaughter of the highest order and they're concerned about the effect it will have on me. She has jumped in her car and driven around toward the newsagent to find me.

I choke on my breath as Annie drops to the ground beside me, collecting my newspapers and encouraging me to stand up.

There's nothing to say and there's no way to say it.

I am suddenly a long way from home. I think of my Mother and Father in Glen Waverley and how shattered and sad they will be. I think of my Sister who will be equally as embarrassed by - and a little for - me. I think of the actors and the sudden and unexpected shock of realisation that they were right all along not to trust me entirely. I think of the script, and the actual versions of the lines misquoted by McCauley - wishing I had not given up on my right to cut them from the script while the actors still had time to adjust and re-learn. Fuck their precious Egos! Look where it got them! Fuck them! Look where it got me! I thought of Sonia and her dreams and expectations for this marvellous play and the wonderfully talented fucked-up dreamer of a boy who had written it. She had plucked him from obscurity for their crazy mad dash onto a mainstage in the Theatre Capital of the English Speaking World.

The shame and the horror of it changed me forever in a split second.

****

Over the coming days the bad reviews continued to appear. Shockers. I can't quote them. I don't have them anymore. Once, not that many years ago, I burnt them all. Including McCauley's (which is actually quoted from memory here). They were like seeping, angry herpes blisters: every time I caught sight of them, all the fun had to stop.

Tunnels ... limped along. The Number One Touring Company, which ended up being the consolation prize to a West End transfer, never eventuated. At the meeting later that day, they informed me that they wanted me to write two characters out of the script. I responded with "Which two? Tchaikovsky and ... ?" I was merciless. They were fools. There was no other way I could even begin to defend myself from the events of the morning. As far as they were concerned I was no longer the boy with the goose that laid the golden eggs tucked under my arm. Instead, I had somehow miraculously morphed into the parent of a dribbling, snotty-nosed, spastic baby - who was desperately trying to find it a good home. But I have always believed in life after death, and I scoffed at their ridiculous suggestion. Sonia was finally convinced I was utterly mad.

The box office telephone stopped ringing ... almost overnight. A Jewish critic in a Jewish magazine loaded the final bullet into the chamber by referring to the play as "... roast pig's ear ..." - which, when you think about it, is actually quite astonishing in its brutality. People stopped turning up to collect their tickets. The length of the play did, in fact, come back to haunt me - with one critic writing something along the lines of: " ... never mind the tunnels, this terrible piece of theatre is positively interminable!" Or something witty and droll like that.

Regardless, they had achieved their end. The public and private humiliation of me and my beloved, spastic child, was complete. And I was grateful for the silence in my life.

It is impossible to know how to behave in these circumstances. People suddenly stop acknowledging your existence. For my front of house friends, I metamorphisised from someone who had single-handedly guaranteed their rent for weeks, maybe months, into someone who had just kicked a puppy to death on the footpath out the front. Sonia is suddenly, not so sure. She knows we share the responsibility for the crime - but it's quite obviously proving a little too complicated for her to resolve her guilt by association. Box office staff are instantly laid off - I know, because I watch them gather their belongings and leave.

It was like the award winning Child Care Centre I had left my child at had suddenly burned to the ground - and I was the parent of the only child inside who hadn't managed to get out. Everywhere I turned, there was nothing but suspicion, shame, embarrassment and resentment. I wanted - and needed - to defend my play but I needed people around me who believed it was worth defending. None of those people were here. Anywhere. I had been tipped upside down and exposed as a fraud. A cheat. I had coloured their worlds with great hope, passion and inspiration, only to now be the cause of their creative poverty and actual penury. And it had all come as a complete surprise. We were in shock ... not the shock of a somewhat high telephone bill, but the heart-stopping shock of someone facing what they innately recognise as their impending, and instant, demise.

There was really only one thing to do. I left the theatre and decided, in spite of the distance and myself, to walk somewhere ... anywhere ... home. I had been introduced to the concept of Damage Control.

And as suddenly as it had ended, several quite extraordinary things happened. Unexpected miracles which, to this very day - somewhat astonishingly - make me grateful I dared.

There was, after all, still one more New End Theatre record to smash.

Image: The park near my home in Ealing, London.

Scraps of distraction: Part 4

Opening Night

How should a boy from Bairnsdale feel about the fact that his play is opening in London? And what should he spend the day doing? He can't go to the theatre because they are painting the entire inside of it black. By lunchtime, the paint will be drying and the dry-cleaned costumes will arrive shortly thereafter. Cleaners will be going through the place from top to bottom. Instead, he messes around at home and fields phone calls from Australia and from all his friends in London. He will get to the theatre in time for a drink or two and sit down with Sonia to go through his schedule of formalities, including a brief meet and greet with some local dignitaries, the West End producers and a couple of directors from the RSC.

I had been 'seeing' a wonderful boy - whose name escapes me completely. He worked for some kind of impossibly secret service agency in the United States. The first time we had a dinner party at his place, there were five of us. I was the star, of course, and I held court with due aplomb. I was still a very different person then. I had performed in musicals and plays all over London. I had sung Sondheim for Sondheim. I had trained as an actor, writer and director there and had visited Mel Gibson on the set of the film version of Hamlet he was making somewhere or other. I had flown in more jump-seats than I care to remember (including one especially memorable and delightful experience with Aer Lingus, which I will write about in more detail another time). I had spent a week in Luxembourg wandering about, wide-eyed, in the Ardennes. I had flown to Paris for dinner.

Life was grand. Impossibly.

My boy always offered our guests a wonderful cocktail at the end of the evening. It was called a "Security Leak" ... and within minutes of consuming it, you would be unconscious wherever it was you were sitting ... or reclining. Nothing, and no-one, else has ever managed to stop me mid-sentence. Except Alistair McCauley. But we'll deal with him shortly. And when you woke up, some half an hour later, you would be unable to remember a single thing about the entire night. He and another friend of ours - a colleague of his - were to be my guests at Opening Night.

I don't recall much about the day at all. My mind was totally preoccupied with the night ahead. There were still a couple of flat sections in the performance ... and an especially messy transition into the final scene in Act One. But the music took over. Tchaikovsky was my fallback. How could I fail?

The theatre foyer and office was full to bursting with flowers and cards. The bar was being stocked and I collided with the caterers who were delivering the Opening Night Finger Food. Sonia was buzzing. She looked gorgeous! She had mirrored my blanket enthusiam and love for this difficult child of mine from the start. I had sent it to her as soon as it was finished. To the best of my knowledge, there were two 'transfer' theatres in London: The Hampstead Theatre and The New End. Fatefully, I picked hers.

****

Sonia had rung me some days after receiving it and told me she thought it an amazing script ... but that her theatre was full until the end of the year. There were weeks of pre-Edinburgh try-outs and something else was currently limping toward the finishing line. I thanked her for liking it and we wished each other 'all the best'.

My problems actually all stem from one simple fact: I had never really expected anything to come of this play. I had written it in three days after months of research and hours and hours of intense and illuminating discussions with several renowned Musicologists - each of them a Tchaikovsky 'expert'. They had guided me through the canon in prayerful and awe-inspiring ways, highlighting the journeys of particular instruments within each score. Tchaikovsky, unlike almost all of his peers - past, present and future (his and ours) - wrote for the entire orchestra. Every single instrument. Most composers write for the instrument of their expertise (generally piano) and work with someone else on the orchestra parts - or hand the responsibility for the orchestrations over to someone else entirely. Not Tchaikovsky. The journey of every single instrument through every single one of his compositions was mapped out by him. I first became captivated by him for this reason: what the fuck must this have sounded like in his mind?

This is also why he is the greatest composer to have ever lived - and I also believe that this little known aspect of his powers of creation go most of the way in explaining why he was, and still is, so popular. Even if the lay-person really has no definitive idea of why his music moves them in the way that it does. My understanding of Tchaikovsky's music literature is something that, to this very day, gives me great pleasure. An example, perhaps, is to find a really great recording of his Fifth Symphony and listen to the journey of the trumpet. It was once affectionately described to me as 'a symphony for the trumpet and orchestra'. In a really really great recording, it's actually quite easy to hear why.

If a ballet company anywhere in the world is struggling financially, they'll whip on Swan Lake. You might like to listen to the flute in the maelstrom that follows Siegfried's realisation that he has been deceived by Odile. The manner in which the orchestra drowns out the flute is utterly heart-breaking in a great recording. And Swan Lake gets 'em in every time. Without fail. (Within the space of six months this year, there are two Swan Lakes in Australia: Matthew Bourne's and The Paris Opera Ballet's.) A mind-bogglingly high percentage (something like seventy-eight) of people who have ever attended a live orchestral concert have chosen to attend for the first time because Tchaikovsky was on the programme.

I have certainly picked an incredibly popular subject with which to plummet to the very depths of unpopularity. Ken Russell would end up looking like David Lean by the time Geoffrey Williams was through with Maestro Piotr Tchaikovsky!

Less than a week later, Sonia called me again and told me that she could not get my play out of her head ... and would I come to her theatre and see a play. And have a meeting. Of course I would! A couple of days later I danced into the New End and met with Sonia for the first time. She had a problem. The play that was on at the moment was playing to almost empty houses (a concept of Sonia's I would help to utterly redefine for her in the weeks ahead). So ... if she closed this current catastrophe early and brought one or two of the pre-Edinburgh try-outs forward, would I be interested in bringing Tunnels ... into her theatre (she pointed to a date in her diary) here?

What I should have said - and very nearly did say - was said "No." "Thank you."

It is very, very clear to me now. In the lush embrace of hindsight. "No" was the right answer ... as it so often should have been - and only occasionally has been - ever since.

"Thank you anyway, Sonia," I should have said, "but are you out of your God-damned fucking mind? It's a play about the greatest composer that ever lived, to be staged in the city of his greatest fulfilments ... not to mention his most ardent admirers and defenders!? Tchaikovsky himself said that English musicians performed his music better than anyone else in the world! I'm Australian you Stupid Woman! The English press HATE Australians! In their gruesome, post-colonial paranoia they still thought that there were wooden ships sporting the Union Jack conquering great, previously unchartered continents for the acquisition of King or Queen and Country! Most of the sad little perpetually soft cocks still do! Sorry guys, but your Piotr The Great is actually Piotr The Great Big Pillow-biting Shirt-lifting Turd-burgling Arse Bandit! ... and if you don't believe me, I'm gonna show you because he's going to spend - what is it now? - at least three pages of somebody else's artless and ultimately pointless fucking dialogue in bed with a Russian Prince who didn't even fucking exist! There are monologues in this crap that run for four pages. That's four A4 pages Sonia. Jesus Christ! There's one monologue in there that's so fucking long and verbose it's practically a short fucking play of its very own!"

What was this woman thinking? What was I thinking when, instead, my Ego said "Yes".

****

Tonight she was on fire. Her theatre was glittering with artistic, creative and theatrical potential ... and the bar was doing great business. As a Director, I don't interact with actors before a performance. I acknowledged their arrival with a smile and a wave ... or a kiss ... and watched on proudly as they gathered up their flowers and took them down in the direction of their respective dressing rooms. They were certainly nervous, but I was already well on the way to complete sensory obliteration at the bar. My friends had started arriving with flowers and gifts and as early as the half hour call, I was already propping myself up on the bar.

The foyer bell suddenly started ringing ... and the second I heard it I had to excuse myself and go into the office toilet where I promptly threw up. I have had many deep, meaningful and lasting relationships with any number of repositories of my turgid and tormented fear, but this one was unique. "This one will go down in theatre history!" I remember thinking, somewhat obliquely. I tried to stand up, but couldn't. Every flaw, doubt and anxiety about what all these people were about to witness punched hard at my eyeballs - from the inside of my head. I tried to get up, but slipped on the tiles and cracked my lower jaw so hard on the toilet bowl I thought I was going to slide into a technicolour coma on the spot. Vomit stained rented tuxedo and all.

It would have been preferable.

My boy was finally sent in to get me and - for what would turn out to be the final time - he looked at me with so much love for my pain. He couldn't comprehend why I wasn't going to watch the performance ... no matter how much I tried to convince him I knew what was going to happen ... better than the people who were about to make it happen.

Once he finally had me on my feet, he doused me with breath-freshener and we walked together out into the nearly empty foyer. He reluctantly let go of my hand and disappeared into the auditorium. The doors shut and the moments between then and the music starting were laced with an indescribable panic, mixed with hope and fear. I stood by the door and listened. It had started. There was no stopping it now. And I walked up the stairs to the bar.

"The horror." "The horror."

I sat at the bar drinking vodka and orange juice. It's hard to remember precisely what I was thinking. I could see it unfolding and falling over ... dazed and confused ... a scratch on his knee. Bandaids. More bandaids. OK, this is serious ... we need to get him to a hospital. The bar staff and front of house staff eventually started to busily prepare for the interval. Covers came off the finger-food and champagne started to be poured into glasses. Ooops! Here we go! The end of Act One. Is there still anyone awake in there? Alive? The barman looked at me and then looked at the back door to the very top of the auditorium. Ha! I remember thinking. Wouldn't it be funny if I snuck in to watch, only to discover that the audience had all walked out an hour ago and were up the road at the pub? Or gallantly throwing themselves in front of oncoming traffic ... anything but this! Anything but this terrible, terrible play!

I nodded ... and he quickly and quietly opened door into the auditorium. I poked my head in and looked at the stage. There he was, Robert's and my version of Piotr Tchaikovsky, supporting his chin with the back of his hand, and fiercely conducting the end of the Fifth Symphony. Antonina was stage left in her 'cell', madly scribbling a slogan in chalk on the jet-black wall. Nadia von Meck, his patron, was tearing up music and letters on the opposite side of the stage before collapsing onto the floor in a fit of jealousy, hatred and rage. Act One was certainly ending.

And Blackout.

Silence.

Polite applause. The worst kind. Sustained for an almost impolite amount of time. Maybe, I thought, they would refuse to stop clapping in the hope that they may prevent - or prohibit - what was to come. Were they demanding the curtain calls? I know I wasn't ... and I ducked back out to the bar to be met with the concerned frowns of the entire theatre staff. They had heard rapture all week. This was something they didn't recognise. But The Universe stepped in and made sure I did. She wanted to soften the blow. Immediately, and instinctively, I knew it had failed to lift off the ground.

I tried to lift my spirits as the foyer bar filled with punters ... but the buzz was hopelessly subdued. Act 2 was lighter, and shorter ... the fruits of the labour which was Act One were waiting to be harvested. Drama is tough on Act Ones. Audiences often conveniently ignore the fact that there's still much more of the story to come. Act Ones do the hard yards. Act Twos get to stand on the podium. (I remember a conversation with a theatre manager at another production of a play in mine in Melbourne who thought my Act One was "a dog", but he adored Act Two ... so much so that every night he was on duty, he would sneak in to watch it and sob quietly to himself in a curtained off alcove. After many conversations, he finally agreed that Act Two was only as good as it was because of the work that Act One had done to set it up.)

Sonia made a point of coming up to me and gripping me a little too tightly on the shoulder. My boy and his colleague left and I never saw or heard from either of them again. I picked at least two notebook-wielding critics, stealing food and engaged in quiet, almost catatonic, conversation. They didn't dare look at me. But sitting here today, I recognise the expressions they wore. I've worn one like it myself on those nights when you curse the obligation that prevails over your right to run as far and as fast away from this travesty of what some people think is theatre.

My friends from the Royal Opera were fighting with all their might to increase the buzz in the room. One of them called it 'compelling' ... a little too loudly. I just wanted it all to be over.

It would be. And it was. The only thing I was less certain of was the extent of the damage. Not yet anyway.

****

Following the performance, the company were invited to an extravagant supper at a nearby restaurant which Sonia and Roy had booked out for the purposes of our Opening Night Party. Forced jovial congratulations punctuated tense, deprived silences until Sonia made a speech about how proud she was to have my play in her theatre. She was actually quite convincing. I made a speech about how wonderful it was to have made it to Opening Night ... and how proud and grateful I was for everyone's efforts to get us here. I was genuinely moved by the impression this rancid beast of a play of mine had made on everyone. There may not have been plaudits galore, but there was creative and spiritual exhaustion ... the best kind.

In the days that followed, Sonia and my relationship would crumble underneath the most painful layers of betrayal, legal threats and toxic, unspoken blame that neither of us - in that blind passion-fuelled meeting so many, many weeks ago - ever imagined possible. In the meantime, I went home in a cab and lay awake all night ... hoping, against hope, that my instincts were, in fact, wrong. Until I fell asleep - dreaming of The Reviews.